Saturday, November 29, 2014

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

It's unfair to blame the police for the racism of the entire society . . . . But we have to face the fact that incarceration of blacks is four to five times their portion of the general population, and CRIME IS FALLING, and has been for about forty years. As for risking their lives for protecting the community, the police love to say it, but it's not true, especially in heavily black areas. Loggers and truck drivers and coal miners die at considerably higher rates than do police officers, but you don't hear them whining about how they're risking their lives for us all the time. If the job is too dangerous for you, then look for a safer one. Bottom line is that I'd love to hear a police chief announce that he's sick and tired of getting into unnecessary conflicts with black people due to a racist society's determination to lock them in jail rather than educate and employ them. But that would be a "political" statement, and the police aren't permitted a political life. In short, they signed on for what they're getting the day they took the job.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Democrats have reached near genius in their ability to keep a widely disliked GOP on top in the United States' fake democracy. Consider the recent electoral rout that the Democrats deservingly suffered. Apologists for the party claim that the "dumb" Republican voters rejected the Democrats' sterling record of (1) 65 straight months of economic growth (2) 56 months of private sector growth (3) Unemployment falling from 10.1% to 5.9% (4) The budget deficit reduced by two-thirds (5) Fewer American's "in harm's way" in war zones (6) Zero attacks by Al Qaeda inside the U.S. (7) Record stock market growth.

Of course, this is a very self-serving and highly skewed portrayal of political reality. The "economic growth" is the weakest economic recovery in all of the post-WWII era, if indeed the anemic Obama performance can even be called recovery. In any case, economic growth tells you nothing about the DISTRIBUTION of wealth, a point that liberals regularly bring up when Republicans tout the growth record of "free enterprise," but just as regularly forget when it shows Democrats in a bad light. For the record, grotesque maldistribution of wealth in the Obama era is at or near an all-time record. As for private sector job growth it's mostly a mirage, with lots of low-wage contingent jobs without benefits that can and are quickly eliminated at employers' convenience. The same goes for the unemployment rate: people who have given up looking for jobs that don't exist are no longer counted as unemployed, though they remain jobless. So the "falling" unemployment rate disguises increasingly hopeless economic misery. The budget deficit reduction is precisely due to austerity policies that liberals supposedly oppose, but actually support, like extending the Bush era tax cuts for the rich and failing to effectively protest the cuts in social programs that inevitably followed. This is progress? Fewer American's in harm's way in war zones? Re-positioning of U.S. troops while the U.S. continues to maintain a global military presence and starts wars right and left, not in war zones, but inside other nations where large numbers of civilians are inevitably tortured and killed is nothing to boast of. Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has attacked seven, or is it eight, sovereign nations since coming to office. Henry Kissinger must be seething with envy. Zero attacks by Al Qaeda inside the U.S.? This is largely luck, as there can't be any question that U.S. policy in the Obama era continues to fuel bitter hatred of the U.S., portending further horrors inside the U.S. as well as elsewhere. Record stock market growth? Don't we have to mention the trillions of dollars of liquidity injections from the U.S. taxpayer that are fueling this "growth?" Six years after a near-fatal heart attack the patient is still on the operating table receiving constant blood transfusions, and somehow this equates with robust recovery. Sure.